Professor Kirsten Perrett

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National Allergy Centre of Excellence Director

Director and Allergy Research Pillar Lead of the National Allergy Centre of Excellence
Group Leader of Population Allergy, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
Paediatric Allergist and Vaccinologist, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Honorary Professorial Fellow, Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne
Director of the Centre for Food Allergy Research

As Director of the National Allergy Centre of Excellence, Professor Kirsten Perrett oversees the national plan of action to facilitate and accelerate research into drug, food, insect, and respiratory allergic disease. In her role as Allergy Research Pillar Lead she is also supporting the establishment of a Clinical Trials Network, including embedded clinical trials for penicillin de-labelling, food allergy, venom immunotherapy for insect anaphylaxis, and respiratory allergy.

Prof Perrett is Group Leader of the Population Allergy Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI). She is also Director of the Centre for Food Allergy Research (CFAR), hosted at MCRI; Paediatric Allergist and Vaccinologist at The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and an Honorary Professorial Fellow, at the University of Melbourne.

For more than 15 years, Prof Perrett has spear-headed investigator-led and industry-sponsored vaccine and food allergy clinical trials and is a highly sought-after trials expert and food allergy clinician-scientist.

She has been awarded a 2022-26 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Award and 2018-2027 Melbourne Children’s Clinician-Scientist Fellowship. Prof Perrett has also received more than $44.3 million in competitive, government, philanthropic and industry research funding and has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. Her research has helped shape world-wide changes to food allergy prevention, diagnosis and management.

As Director and a Chief Investigator of the third continuous five-year term of the NHMRC funded CFAR – launched in 2012 – Prof Perrett has helped ensure Australia continues to be a global leader in food allergy research.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

The hype and hope of new food allergy research. Nature Medicine. Apr 2024

The Human Health Impacts of the Red Imported Fire Ant in the Western Pacific Region Context: A Narrative Review. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease. Mar 2024

A genome catalog of the early-life human skin microbiome. Genome Biology. Nov 2023

Australian infant food allergy emergency presentations following updated early food introduction guidelines. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. Jul 2023

Phase 3 Trial of Epicutaneous Immunotherapy in Toddlers with Peanut Allergy. The New England Journal of Medicine. May 2023

Tree nut introduction in infants with peanut and/or egg allergy. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. Nov 2022

A pragmatic approach to infant feeding for food allergy prevention. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. Sept 2022

Ana o 3 sIgE and diagnostic algorithms reduce cost of cashew allergy diagnosis in children compared with skin prick test: A cost comparison analysis. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. Aug 2022

Association Between Earlier Introduction of Peanut and Prevalence of Peanut Allergy in Infants in Australia. JAMA. Jul 2022

Author Reply. Value in health: the journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. Mar 2022

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Professor Kirsten Perrett

Proudly in partnership with the National Allergy Council and allergy organisations